Ill-conceived and badly managed farming methods
have devastated the economy, health and ecology of the Aral
Sea Basin in Central Asia, affecting millions of people.

It all started to go drastically wrong when planners
decided to intensify cotton production in the 1950s. By
1978, a vast network of irrigation channels stretched into
the deserts to quench cotton's thirst across 7.6 million ha,
mainly in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

The water was diverted from the Amu Dar'ya and Syr Dar'ya
rivers which feed the Aral Sea. Salinization became
widespread leading to acute soil degradation, and the Aral,
once the fourth largest lake in the world, began to shrink
rapidly, leaving fishing boats and their communities high
and dry, sometimes tens of kilometres from the old
shoreline.

As well as losing their livelihoods when the fishery
collapsed in the early 1980s, many of these communities now
face appalling health conditions. In Karakalpakstan, a
semi-independent republic of Uzbekistan, women are victims
of a pandemic of anaemia that has hit the small republic in
the past decade.

Aral Sea Basin
facts

Salinized land in
Uzbekistan

1982

12 000 km2

(36%)

1985

16 430 km2

(43%)

Inflow into the
Aral SeaHistorical 56
km3 per year

1966-1970

47 km3

1981-1985

2 km3

Studies show that of the 700 000 women here, some 97
percent are anaemic with haemoglobin levels in their blood
well below the World Health Organization's standard of 110
grams per litre. Five times the percentage of women affected
a decade ago, it is probably the highest rate in the world,
reports the British-based magazine New Scientist.

Local doctors say the polluted water is to blame. The
drinking-water available to most people is polluted drainage
water laden with salts and concentrated chemicals from the
cotton fields. One doctor says that local women cannot
absorb iron -- iron deficiency is the usual cause of anaemia
-- because of high levels of metals such as manganese and
zinc in the water.

Nor is anaemia the only health problem. The people of
Karakalpakstan also suffer from rising rates of thyroid and
kidney disease. Over the period 1981 to 1987, it is
estimated that liver cancers soared an incredible 200
percent, throat cancers were up 25 percent and infant
mortality climbed 20 percent.

Key farming
blunders

Discharge of highly mineralized,
pesticide-rich return flows into main
rivers

Use of unlined irrigation canals
leads to waste and seepage of salts
into groundwater

Waterlogged fields lead to salty
groundwater and salt runoff

No drainage network to remove
unwanted water and chemicals from the
fields